ms family account screen time limits not working

Anonymous
2019-11-03T16:29:00+00:00

Hi

Despite trying all the suggestions I can find online to fix it screen time limits have not been working for months. The limit is set correctly but Windows appears to ignore it. Family activity reporting shows that the activity duration is greater than the limit set.

Thanks

Mik

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Family and online safety

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2020-09-26T00:35:11+00:00

I too had struggled to get this feature to stick properly to one of my three kids. Two were working fine, one not. All identical hardware, so it was highly irritating one was out of alignment to the others. 

Reinstalled the OS on his PC, still no joy. Removed him from family group, tried everything on the suggestions and they all were useless. 

What I noted was that the time limit that I setup was being ignored but there was still a time limit. Instead of 1.5 hours, it was 4 hours per day. No matter what I set it to, it remained. However, if I turned off limits on his account, instantly the setting on his PC was aware that the limits were removed. When I imposed them once more, the same 4 hour limit (rather than the 1.5 hour limit) was turned back on. 

I concluded that in my case, the time limits set on the website were being ignored or overruled by something on the PC. The feature was linked though, reporting functions worked, and clearly when I switched the time limits off, they applied so no issue with the account itself. 

I searched around a bit more, and saw this bit of advice:

Delete the Parental Control Settings in the following path:

  • On the Start screen, type C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Parental Controls and press Enter.

Delete the folder and files under this location. When the user logs in again, it will force a check with the settings stored online and redownload the settings. 

The reason this didn't get fixed when I did a reinstall of the OS was that I kept files/settings and it never got wiped in the OS re-install. 

As soon as I did this, the correct time limit and schedule was finally applied to my son on his PC. No idea why it got stuck, or why it would never overwrite, but it cleared it. Hopefully future adjustments to the time limits and schedule will work as normal from now on.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-14T04:15:43+00:00

    It's weird, I just setup my surface pro 3 to have family access for my kid. I never let them on it before

    Screen limits worked as expected. 

    I have it working fine on a windows pro s mode (very old thinkpad), windows home (surface 3) and now my surface pro 3 (windows pro ) 

    It's not working on my ARM base miix630 with windows pro smode. Think I'll try to fully refresh this tablet and remove it completely from my account devices and try setting it all up again

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-05-14T04:09:19+00:00

    I just went and removed all times saved for each day. 

    I added time period allowed to just before my current time.  Saved. Waited a few minutes .  Worked, I logged in with my kids account and while I got the start page, the pop up saying time's up showed up shortly after. Logged out. 

    Then I changed the time allowed to be after.  Logged back in. Initially I got the pop up saying times up but shortly after it changed and allowed me in. I even got the almost times up warning cause by that time it was getting close to the end of the allowable time slot. 

    I use one schedule for all devices, I don't have an Xbox

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-05-10T15:08:55+00:00

    Thanks for the response.  The majority of our problems actually lie with the XBox side of the equation [even though this thread is Windows 10].  But it somehow affects his activity limit on the Surface which is running Windows 10.  I am not sure if it is the Windows 10 limits affecting XBox or vice versa, but it is driving us crazy.

    On his surface I setup his user with his ******@outlook.com account.  Are you suggesting something different?

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-05-10T08:17:05+00:00

    Hi,

    Thanks for the response. I actually figured out my problem. The account that my daughter was signing in was an Active Directory account joined with Microsoft account. Once I set her up with local user account and signed her into Microsoft account everything started working as it should, although, I'll check for the odd behaviour you described. Which build of Windows 10 do you have?

    You really just needed to create a new local account and associated that account to microsoft account later?

    Maybe it's corruption some where in the profile directory....  I have it working on a couple older laptops and a newer one just seems to ignore the screen time limits!  The kids fight for the new one like mad lol.

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